


All The Stars In The Universe

by jamwrites



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Galra Empire, Gay, Gay Male Character, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Keith (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Torture, Violence, also idk about the character death tag I mean, better safe than sorry I guess, but not really graphic torture, klance, klangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:31:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamwrites/pseuds/jamwrites
Summary: After being rescued from capture by the Galra Empire, Lance isn't the same. He's silent. Reserved. Broken. But Keith won't accept this; every night, he comes to talk to Lance. Every night, he attempts to fix what is broken, and tonight may be his last chance. 
(based off (with permission) an idea by legendarydragondefender and khlance on tumblr.)





	

_Keith found that he was good at talking to Lance. The fear in his gut was a rather nice motivator, among other things. Though it was a one-sided conversation, knowing that Lance was listening was good enough for Keith. He would talk about anything, about his day or the other Paladins or some new trick he had learned. Lance was silent through it all. Yet every night, Keith came back. And he would keep coming. As long as Lance was here, he would come back._

 **

Nobody said anything all through dinner.

Sure, there was plenty of chatter. Pidge was going on about some new mods to Green and Hunk was picking Allura’s brain over some equations he’s been working on, but nobody was actually focusing or interested in anything they were saying. All of it was forced. All a show. All lights and smoke and mirrors to try and cover up the yawning black hole that was the boy sitting one seat away from the rest of the group, poking at his green goo with an expressionless face.  

They were all intensely aware of him and his silence. Trying not to show it.

This was the way it’d been.

And Keith would have given all the stars in the universe to fix it.

Lance signed something too quick for Keith to catch, and then stood so abruptly his chair nearly tipped over. With slow, plodding, methodical steps, Lance took his tray up to the washer and then headed out the door of the mess hall. It was painful how much easier the conversation at the table became once he left.

Keith caught Shiro’s eye, then got up to leave. This, too, had become normal.

“Goodnight, Keith.” Allura touched his hand briefly as he passed her. Her eyes told him, _good luck._

He nodded. “Night.”

It wasn’t hard to follow Lance to his room. Black holes, after all, leave a trail of light wherever they go. All the stars in the universe left a very bright trail, indeed.

 **

The door was never locked, and even the old Lance wouldn’t have opened it up for Keith, so he let himself in. Tonight, like every time, the sight of the space caught on Keith’s heart. Before he had been captured, Lance’s room was covered with posters he had picked up from alien worlds. Clothes had been strewn everywhere like foliage, the bed unmade. A typical teenager’s room, bursting with personality and grime in equal parts.

Now it was all tidied away. Cleaned up and spotless like a prison cell.

Keith stepped in as quietly as he could, standing in the little rectangle of light from the hall. He let his hand brush over an unremarkable bare patch on a wall composed entirely of bare patches. This was the spot where the framed glass photograph of him and Lance had hung. They had just saved a planet covered with beaches of white sand, and had done so using a particularly awesome combo of ice and fire from their lions. Pidge had taken a celebratory picture of them; Keith was smiling without opening his mouth, but Lance was grinning ear to ear, his arm wrapped around Keith’s waist, head buried in the hollow of Keith’s shoulders, bathed in sunshine. Keith had secretly loved that picture.

At his feet was where Lance hurled it to the ground.

“Knock knock,” Keith whispered, turning to the bed. Lance lay curled up on top of the blankets, facing away from the door, fully clothed. The same as last night. And the night before, and all nights since they had rescued Lance from that Galra lab.

Keith could envision so clearly what the old Lance would have done; Keith would have entered the room and Lance would smile and ask why Keith wasn’t training or doing sit ups, and Keith would say he just wanted to--

_Stop it._ All he was doing was torturing himself; the old Lance wasn’t coming back. What he had was this unmoving boy in front of him who wouldn’t even acknowledge his presence, who probably hated him. The worst part was that Keith deserved that hate. He would have hated him too, had their positions been reversed.

He waited for Lance to tell him to leave. He _wanted_ Lance to tell him to leave; it was what he deserved. But the boy on the bed made no sound, and his silence was an invitation.

Keith sat on the mattress.

“Is it okay if I stay?” He always asked. Always. He was so, so careful around Lance. If Lance had shown any signs of wanting Keith to leave, he would have in a heartbeat.

“How...how was your day? Mine was normal, I guess. I stepped up to the next level on the training ‘bot and got my ass kicked. But that’s what I get for being cocky.”

On he went, like he had every night for the last handful of weeks. He rambled on about what he had done that day, then what the others were up to; Pidge was working on these mods for Green, Hunk trying to crack that equation, Coran patching up this part of the castle. Words and words came spilling out of his mouth. Like every night, Keith couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at the irony; when he had and Lance had met, Keith had been the silent one and Lance had the word vomit. Now here Keith was, talking and talking and talking about nothing and getting no response.

Sometimes, Keith didn’t know exactly how to talk to Lance. Even ignoring his condition, before Lance had been captured, he and Keith had been...well, Keith wasn’t sure. They were friends, but different. There had been stares caught on both sides, brushes of hands, shoulders, blushing cheeks. Exchanges that were terrifying and exhilarating for no reason. Countless hours spent on Keith’s part thinking about what _if--_

And then Lance had been ripped out of his life.

He leaned his head back to rest on the wall; Lance was beside him on the bed now, facing away, but still so gut-wrenchingly close. Sitting there with him, on the blankets and sheets he slept in every night, Lance’s smell was everywhere and it made something in Keith ache.

“It’s still quiet without you. I still make a mistake and expect you to pounce on it, you know? I never thought I would say it, but I think we all miss your jokes, dude. And your puns. Kind of just your noisiness in general. The Castle’s too big to be so quiet, you know? But it’s alright. We’re figuring it out. Nobody’s rushing you. And Allura’s doing well too. Blue--” Keith stumbled. He had wandered into this territory without thinking.

“--Blue...Blue and Allura are getting along.” That was the other thing. Lance had mostly recovered from his injuries in a few weeks, and had tried to pilot Blue soon after.

She hadn’t let him.

It had been sickening to watch. Lance stood in front of what had been his lion, staring. Not crying, not screaming or yelling or begging. Just staring. And then he had turned around and left the hangar. Just like that. Silently. Without a fight.

Allura told them later that she heard the call that night. Following the psychic song, she had wandered in her pajamas to the armory. The door had barely opened when the blue bayard flew to her.

_“I don’t want it!”_ A few days later. After flying Blue and forming Voltron, Allura had thrown up in the dirt. She described it like wearing another person’s clothes, their underwear, like sleeping in their bed, like kissing their spouse, except a hundred times worse. Lance’s ghost haunted the Allura in that lion.

She pushed the bayard into Lance’s chest while he stared.

“I don’t want it!” She said again, tears streaming down her face. “Take it! It’s yours! It’s yours, Lance. I’m not the Blue Paladin. You are! Blue will take you back. _Please!_ ” Allura let go of the bayard, and Lance let it fall to the floor.

For a single moment, Allura lost it completely. She sobbed and dropped to her knees. But no sooner had she touched the ground then she was picking herself back up again, stumbling to get away.

That part, Keith had seen.

 **

Lance didn’t want to talk. Nor did he ever; ever since being rescued, Lance hadn’t spoken a word. But tonight he was ignoring Keith completely. Fine. Keith knew how to take a hint.

Keith murmured a “g’night” and headed for the door, but something stopped him. He hesitated. There was something he had to tell Lance tonight. He had come here for a reason, beyond the usual.

“Lance…” Keith kicked at the wall. He was caught halfway between the glowing blue lights of the hall and the darkness of Lance’s room. “I have...there’s something you should know.”

Lance didn’t move.

Why was this so hard? The words were gummy in Keith’s throat. He swallowed, tried, tried again.

“Tomorrow, Allura’s taking the Castle through a wormhole to our next mission. Its system is right next to Earth’s.” He hugged his chest. “She offered to fly by Earth. We don’t have time to stop, but we have a lot of ships in the hangar. You could...you could go home.”

He bit his lip. He had tried to work around the unsaid, but it was there anyway. Keith could practically hear Lance thinking it with a sarcastic whine in his voice: _you can go home, because we don’t need you anymore._

Usually Lance acted like Keith wasn’t there at all, and tonight had been no different. But honestly? Keith had expected this news to do...something, at least. Provoke some sort of reaction. At the very least he thought it would piss Lance off. But no. It was like he didn’t even--

“Do you even care?” Keith rounded in the doorway, suddenly angry. This time, he made no effort to try and keep the bite out of his voice. “Huh? Do you even care if you stay on this ship or go home? I don’t see why you would, because either way you’re not around us. Either way, you don’t have to be friends with us. Gods knows you’re not friends with me anymore, or you don’t act like it.”

Where just a moment before Keith had struggled with his words, now he found that he couldn’t stop them. Words and words poured out of his mouth, each one angrier than the last, flying like bullets.

“I’ve been trying. I really, really have. I’ve tried every fucking thing I can think of to help you, Lance, but nothing’s working, and you won’t tell me what’s wrong. I don’t know how to help you if you won’t fucking tell me how! I just want you to get better! I just want to help! _I just want my Lance back!_ ”

Keith froze. He had crossed the room in three long strides and grabbed Lance’s shoulder and forced him to turn over, forced him to look at Keith.

The two of them hadn’t made eye contact in forever. Lance was skittish with it now, but Keith had finally had enough. But seeing Lance’s eyes, really looking at them, wasn’t what made him freeze. It was what those eyes held that froze him.  

Fear.

Keith recoiled as if he’d been slapped. He found he was breathing hard. _Oh. Oh._

“I get it.” He let out his breath he didn’t know he had been holding, and all of his energy went with it. This was what he had been waiting for. Every single night he had come into Lance’s room to talk, this was the rebuke he had expected. And it had finally come. In a way, it almost felt good. Like relief. To no longer have to wait for that terrible consequence and wonder when it would come. But here it was: that burning look of fear and hurt in Lance’s eyes, like the final knife driven between Keith’s ribs.

“I get it. I understand. I’ll leave you alone.”

He deserved that look. With every fiber, Keith knew he deserved that look that exposed his stupid night talks with Lance for what they truly were. It was like he had been committing a robbery and lying to himself about it as he was stealing. Now here he was, caught red-handed.

Keith turned to leave but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Before he could react, Lance was moving past him, running out of the room.

If before had been a slap, this was a punch. Keith sat back hard on the bed, not even trying to wipe the wetness from his face.

Because he deserved this. Because it had all been his fault. Team Voltron had rescued Lance. But before that, he had been captured.

Keith had replayed the scenario a hundred thousand times in his head. It had started when Allura had received three separate distress calls within a day of each other; the team had split up into teams to intercept them, and Lance had Keith had gone together.

And Zarkon had been waiting.

Stupid. Keith had been so stupid, so predictable; a child could have set that trap. Zarkon knew what Keith would do when he saw him, and Keith hadn’t even tried to stop himself. He had jumped at the chance to have a rematch with the Emperor and left Lance in the dust.

By the time Lance arrived, Keith was half dead. It was only the Blue Paladin’s skill that had saved Keith at all.

When Keith had finally opened his eyes and cleared away the dancing spots of black, he saw Blue, floating with her mechanical guts spilled in space, and Zarkon grabbing Lance from her head like a greedy miner prying a jewel from the earth.

“Lance,” Keith had croaked.

Zarkon would have taken him, too, if it hadn’t been for Red. Not eager to try out the role of Galra prisoner again, she had fired to life on her own and jumped Keith out of there, saving them both but leaving Lance behind.

His fault. It was all his fault.

 **

Keith wasn’t sure how long he stayed on Lance’s bed; maybe he had fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew he was being shaken awake.

“Hmm?” He blinked. Wait, he had to still be dreaming, because he was waking up in Lance’s bed with Lance leaning over him.

But then he saw the bags under Lance’s eyes, the grey hairs, the lines on his face. _This is no dream._

Keith frowned. “You came back.” Why?

Well, this was Lance’s room. He probably just wanted Keith to leave so he could sleep in peace.

“I get it,” Keith said, kicking aside the blankets. “I’m gone.”

Wait. Lance was grabbing his shoulder again.

Okay, what the fuck? Keith rounded on him, harsh words ready like weapons, only to see that Lance held two headsets on his arms. They were the same that they had used months and months ago to share each other’s thoughts when the team had been attempting to form Voltron.

But why?

Since being rescued, Lance had been silent. Aside from the occasional grunt, all of his bluster and joking and verbal communication in general were gone, replaced with some patchy sign language Lance had taught himself and soon the others as well. Nobody knew what had happened to him during his capture as a result; he wouldn’t tell them. They had rescued him from a Galra lab. Floating naked in some tube of purple goo, Lance had looked more than half dead when Keith had finally set eyes on him again. But how he had gotten there or where else he had been...it was a mystery.

After they had fished Lance out of the tube and woken him up, Lance had started yelling incoherently. Remembering the rawness of his voice still chilled Keith;

_“No. No! You can’t be here!_ You have to leave! _You can’t be here!”_

Keith looked from the headsets to Lance and back at the sets. With slow, careful movements, Lance was already putting his on. When he was finished, Lance held out the second to Keith, eyebrows raised in expectancy. He still wouldn’t quite meet Keith’s eyes; Lance was focused more on Keith’s chin, but he wasn’t complaining. This was more life than he had seen in Lance in forever.

“You want...to mind meld?” A stupid question. Lance certainly wasn’t using the headsets to clip his toenails. It took Keith a minute or two to remember how the headsets hooked up, but he got there eventually.

With more than a little trepidation fluttering in his heart, Keith followed Lance’s lead and sat, cross-legged on the bed.

Fuck. He had been here before. There had been a night when he and Lance had sat like this on the bed, talking and talking into the early morning, so close their knees were knocking together.

Keith shook the memory away. As he was painfully aware of, you couldn’t change the past. It was solid, immovable. That was the problem with his guilt, he thought. It would be there forever, because he couldn’t change what had happened. There was no fixing it.

“Ready when you are,” Keith said. He still wasn’t entirely sure what Lance’s plan here was. On the other hand, he was afraid to move or do anything at all, like any sudden movement would scare Lance off. He had to trust the other boy.

Keith closed his eyes, and let his mind drift.

His eyelids were lit with a brilliant blue glow from the headsets. _Ignore it._ To do this right, Keith knew he had to leave the physical world behind. Whatever Altean tech allowed these things to work, it required some real zen-mode mojo. Breathe. Okay. And... _sink._

The sensation was nearly indescribable. Hooked up to him, Keith could feel Lance’s mind on the edge of his own, trembling and shaking like a small bird, so different from the last time they had used the mind melders. And yet, “felt” wasn’t quite the right word, because this was like no sense that Keith had. Somewhere between touch and sight, Keith experienced Lance’s mind, and Lance experienced Keith’s. Not only that, but Lance’s mind was...opening up. Extending an invitation. Gingerly, Keith moved towards it.

His environment began to change. Everything was less solid. Fragile. Wherever Keith focused, images flitted from his view. This was what trauma felt like, what nerves frayed by constant fear produced. Keith swallowed and tried to move past it. Lance was letting him in. For the first time, Lance was--

\--the most curious sensation of floating in an ocean, looking around, a wave coming--

\--the vision hit Keith with barely a warning. Except no, he wasn’t Keith. Not exactly...he was in Lance’s body.

_Calm. Stay calm. It’s only a vision._ A vision? Or a memory? Keith couldn’t move Lance’s body at all, so he supposed a memory would make more sense.

_Is that what you’re showing me?_

Lance didn’t respond in words but in that strange sixth sense. Keith mentally nodded.

In the memory, Keith’s--Lance’s--arms were stretched out behind him, clamped to a hanging beam. His legs, too, were shackled, but not so loosely as to be hanging. The resulting effect was that Keith hung in the air with his spine bowed in a slight C, and it was excruciating. The memory told him he had been there for hours. Days, maybe.

“Hello? Is someone there? It’s really rude to keep your date waiting.” In the memory, his mouth moved without his choice, and the voice that came from his body was Lance’s.

A shadow detached itself from the wall. At first all Keith could make out where the glowing slits of eyes, then the long mask, and the swirling robes: a Galra witch-priest.

The witch raised a clawed hand. Purple electricity danced between its long fingernails, and then jumped to Lance’s chest. He screamed.

Quick as thought, the witch teleported closer and ripped off a chunk of Lance’s shirt. He laughed felt blood dribble out of his mouth.

“At...at least buy me dinner first.”

More lightning. More pain.

 **

Later.

The witches came at random times, so that Lance could never predict the torture sessions. The sensation of living in memory was strange; Keith could feel everything Lance could and glean most of his thoughts as well. He felt like a parasite living in the back of Lance’s brain, watching and experiencing but never interfering.

Lance slept fitfully, never for more than a few ragged snatches. The memory fast-forwarded through days and weeks. No longer could Lance summon sarcasm or banter. The witches did not care.

There were brief, merciful times where Lance would be submerged in tanks of purple goo to let his body heal. Once the witches were sure he would not die, they took him out and opened his scars anew.

Lance learned how not to talk. The more he talked, the more lightning was fed to his body. Eventually he couldn’t summon the energy even to mock them from his mind. It seemed they could hear those thoughts as well.

What did he think of, however, was his family. Keith watched Lance’s thoughts flit through his mother, father, sibling after sibling, telling them goodbye, and then through their team; Hunk, Pidge, Shiro, everyone. He was past the point of wishing for rescue. Now he only wished for an end.

And something else...what was that? When the pain go to be too much, Lance retreated to that space deep inside of him, to a bed of stars that he shared with-

The memory skipped ahead. Keith surfaced for a brief moment on that ocean of Lance’s mind, long enough to see another wave coming. It hit him with a slap and the riptide dragged him under.

Lance was hanging again. He could barely open his eyes, but through his eyelashes he could make out a witch approaching, holding a long syringe. The pain of it poking into his neck was almost laughable by now. Just a little prick.

But then the hallucinations began.

They lasted for only a moment, they lasted for years. Lance was back at the Castle. He saw them all, Keith included, but every time he reached out to them for help, Zarkon appeared and murdered them. Violently. And not at all quickly.

Sometimes it was everyone at once, sometimes it was one at a time. Lance was walking down a hall, chasing after Hunk, begging for help. Hunk turned to give it. A hole appeared in his chest and he fell, dead.

“Pidge,” Lance said, approaching where she sat in front of her computers. “Pidge, please.” But when he turned her around, Zarkon was there, laughing over her body.

Lance watched them all die, but by far the most common was Keith. It was the most uncomfortable thing Keith had ever seen, watching himself be killed over and over again. And this time Lance let him see it. All of it. Lance would run into Keith’s arms, sobbing, burying his face in Keith’s chest, only to discover maggots crawling out of Keith’s skin. Keith would appear to rescue him and then be stabbed by Zarkon. Shot by Zarkon. Choked by Zarkon, decapitated, shocked, burned, dead dead dead dead. Lance learned to look at his friends with fear. He learned that his presence was their doom.

He had no way of knowing how long the hallucinations lasted. Reality was a flitting thing, blurry, unreachable. Keith watched Lance burrow down to that place inside him that he had found earlier, only this time, whether from oversight or exhaustion or lack of caring, Lance showed him. All of it.

A bed of stars. Lance, laying in Keith’s arms, crying.

“It’s alright,” Keith watched the other him say, stroking Lance’s hair, kissing the top of his head. “You’re going to be okay.”

Oh.

Keith could feel Lance’s mind watch him watching the memory. Any other time, seeing the confession would have done gods-knew-what to Keith, but right now...right now, he only felt the deepest fear for Lance and honor that he was the one Lance had turned to. Him. Amidst all this pain, even after Keith had betrayed him, Lance still found his comfort in Keith. How?

When the memory slowed to another spot, Lance was floating in a healing tank. Even in the tanks the hallucinations gave him no respite, though they were weaker. He breathed in the liquid oxygen. Wished that it would flood his lungs like normal water.

The door to his chamber broke off its hinges and flew across the room, and Lance paid it no mind. He didn’t even care when Keith appeared, framed by a brilliant flash of light from the corridor. Just another hallucination. Another chance to watch Keith die.

Despite his insistence, however, Lance’s heart rate picked up. He couldn’t watch Keith go through that again. If Keith tried to rescue him, Zarkon would appear and kill them all.

It only took Keith a moment to scan the room. Then he was hacking at Lance’s pod with his sword and Lance was slipping into Keith’s arms.

When Lance breathed air, he began screaming his warning.

 **

The memories ended with a _snap_ , and Keith found himself back in his own body so suddenly it made him ill. Which, in fact, he was. All over the floor.

He doubled over and retched. When he had finished, he stayed hunched, panting. That was what Lance had gone through? For the months they had lost him, Lance had suffered in the deepest hell imaginable.

It took him a few minutes to process all of it. When he did, Keith found understanding.

He looked at Lance, sitting on the bed, face ashen. Reliving those experiences, even from a distance, must have been excruciating.

“You...were taught to fear us.” Keith wiped his mouth and stared at Lance. This time, the other boy didn’t drop his gaze. The second realization: “You don’t hate me.”

The longest silence. And then:

“You know I never hated you, Keith.”

Those were the first words Keith had heard Lance say since being captured, and they hit him like moving train. Keith was crying, he was ugly crying, but he didn’t care. He surged forward and hugged Lance, only to stop a millimeter before touching him.

Lance hesitated, then nodded.

Keith wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, arms wrapped around each other. Lance was stiff at first, cold, but then gradually he began to melt. Into Lance’s shoulder, Keith whispered a thousand times that he wasn’t going anywhere, he was here, he was here, he was right here and he was never leaving.

Lance pulled back. “I can’t believe you thought I hated you.” His voice was slow, hesitant, rusty from disuse. Using it seemed to make him shy all over again.

“I got you captured, Lance. How could you not hate me? How could--”

Keith thought of the bed of stars, Lance’s deepest place. Oh. All over again he realized what that meant. _Oh._

Lance must have read the look on Keith’s face, because his own was burning furiously and he veered off the subject of their thoughts.

“You thought I blamed you? K-Keith, you saved me.”

“I put you there in the first place.”

With jerky movements, Lance shook his head. “No. Zarkon put me there. Keith, you’re the most selfish person I know. Only you could make my epic capture and escape from the Galra all about yourself.”

For the briefest of moments, right there, Keith saw a flash of the old Lance.

Another thought occurred to him. “But why now? What made you start talking to me now?”

Lance drew in a breath.

“You made me realize I had to make a choice. Not tomorrow or next month, but right now. I...I don’t want to go back to Earth. I want to stay here.” So quiet it was almost nothing: “I want to stay here with you.”

Lance leaned forward and thumped his head into Keith’s shoulder. “I’ve been trying to get over what they taught me. And part of me knows that I’m safe and that this is real. But another part--a part that might be stronger, a part that kept me alive--it keeps telling me not to let my guard down. There’s always this awful feeling that at any moment Zarkon’s gonna…”

Lance stopped. He raised his head, and Keith saw his eyes were wide with fear.

“Zarkon.”

“He’s not--”

“No, Keith, _Zarkon_. I think I just figured out his plan.” Lance ran a hand through his hair, thinking. “I didn’t realize it until I watched it all again with you, but they never asked me any questions. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

Now that Lance brought it up, Keith supposed it was strange. There had never been any info the Galra had asked for. All they had done was inflict pain.

“They weren’t torturing me for information,” Lance was saying. “But they were messing with my head. What was the point of all those hallucinations if they were just going to kill me?”

Keith tried to come up with an answer and couldn’t.

“Exactly. Because they were never going to kill me. All along, they were--”

The two of them came to the answer at the same time

“--going to let you be rescued.” The idea hung in the air between them, like some dark worm pulled out of its hole. Keith turned it over and over in his head. The Galra had made Lance doubt his every reality, and then released him back to Team Voltron. But why? Why not just kill him?

He looked at it like an equation, a trick Shiro had taught him for dealing with his anger a long time ago. The Galra had started with Lance an added torture. The end result was a Lance who couldn’t differentiate between reality and hallucination...no, he needed to be more specific than that. The end result was a Lance who didn’t trust his friends. A changed personality. What good would that do? _Think._

The end result was...a Lance who was no longer the Blue Paladin. Lance plus torture equaled an open Blue Paladin position. The result of the equation, in reality, was…

Allura becoming the Blue Paladin.

Keith snapped his head up, and quickly recounted his thinking to Lance.

“Allura’s the Blue Paladin now.” The pain in Lance’s voice was evident. “Why would Zarkon want that, though? He could have captured Blue too. Why give us the chance to form Voltron again?”

“Because…” _Think._ Keith remembered Allura throwing the bayard at Lance. Sobbing, dropping to her knees. Leaving the Castle to pilot the lion.

The answer came to him with sickening clarity.

“Zarkon already tried capturing a Lion. It didn’t work. He knew if he took one part of Voltron, he’d still have to hunt the others individually.” Keith was talking faster now, and Lance was getting the idea too, finishing his sentences.

“But this way, he has--”

“--he has all of us fighting against him. But--”

“--with Allura flying a lion, she isn’t flying the Castle.”

“And if Allura isn’t flying the Castle--”

“She can’t make wormholes!”

“And we can’t escape any attack Zarkon throws at us. We’ll be sitting ducks.”

If the thought before had been ugly, this one was worse. Lance closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Keith had spent a lot of time staring at that part of Lance’s face, admiring the smattering of freckles that adorned his cheeks like brown diamonds. Now, though his skin was more pale and fragile, he briefly wondered if he would get to kiss those freckles sometime soon.

“It’s not over yet.” Lance sounded close to crying. “He’s coming, Keith. And he’s going to kill us all and it’s gonna suck.”

It was probably true. So far Zarkon’s plan had worked out perfectly. Plus, Keith had fought against the Emperor’s might before; he had gotten the sense that Zarkon was hardly even tapping into his powers to fight Keith, yet they had still been overwhelming. If Zarkon really got pissed, really wanted to kill them...Team Voltron would stand little chance, especially with a new Paladin, especially without an escape route. The last time they had ran into a wormhole, it had taken months to find each other again. But at least they had lived. This time, if Zarkon was indeed coming, there would be no running. Allura would have to pilot the blue lion, because forming Voltron was their only chance.

_Unless._

Keith closed his eyes briefly, thought of him and Lance laying in a meadow made of stardust and nebulas, watching the galaxy turn overhead. In the darkest time, he had been who Lance had turned to. He had been Lance’s last, best comfort.

Lance’s memories had shown him a lot. Among that was the revelation that Lance had a really, really big crush on Keith. And Keith more than returned the sentiment.

Allowing himself to think those words was astounding. Refreshing. Like standing and stretching after a day in the pilot’s seat. Keith _liked_ Lance. Oh quiznak, he liked Lance a lot. Before now he had been too afraid to admit as much to himself. But having felt the fear that Lance had lived in, this seemed like nothing.

“Zarkon is pretty much unbeatable. And a master strategist.”

“Not helping, Keith.”

“But,” Keith said, carefully grabbing Lance’s wrists and pulling his hands away from his face. “There’s one thing that he didn’t plan for.”

“And what’s that?”

Keith took a breath. If he said this, did this, there was no going back.

“Us.”

He was already leaning forward, eyes half closed, a million thoughts of rejection running through his head. Lance was by no means healed; he was still hurt, still scared, he would probably never--

Lance closed the rest of the distance by his own power and before either of them knew which way was up, their lips were touching, their lips were moving, _holyshitholyshitholyshit they were kissing._

Keith had never been one to let himself feel unbridled joy. That didn’t go well with his vaguely menacing aura he had crafted so carefully to keep away Garrison freshmen. But if ever in his life he had felt unbridled joy, this particular unbridled joy blew that other shit out of the water. Gold flooded his stomach, his fingers, his face, everywhere he was touching Lance and more and holy fucking shit they were still kissing, this was happening, this was--

Lance pulled back the slightest bit and Keith’s stomach dropped. Oh no. Did Lance not like it? What had he done? Maybe he had seen those memories and thoughts wrong. Oh, he totally had and now he had gone and messed everything up. Why was Keith so stupid? Why why why?

“Keith,” Lance whispered, swallowing, shaking. “I really appreciate the gesture, but you kind of just threw up.” He waved a hand around his mouth. “And I can sorta tell.”

Keith could have reacted to that in a lot of ways, mortal shame being the first, but instead he found himself giggling.

“What’s so funny?” Lance wasn’t even finished asking before he was smiling too, and then laughing, they were both laughing. Maybe from a little bit of hysteria, maybe a little from fear, definitely from jittery teenage first kiss nerves, but Keith found that today, he wanted to laugh instead of cry.

“We,” he said, gulping in air, “are what is so funny. Zarkon has ten thousand years to work on his strategy, and you know the one thing he doesn’t see coming? Gay people.” This set the both of them howling. Keith tried and failed to wipe the tears from his eyes.

Because Zarkon _hadn’t_ accounted for them. He had thought that Lance’s torture would be so complete that he could never make a full recovery, hence never being able to pilot his lion again.

But what Zarkon couldn’t know is that Keith was falling for Lance, and Lance for Keith, and that falling for someone meant that you got close that person. To stay injured, the Galra had counted on Lance isolating himself. And if they were only friends, maybe Keith would have let him. The rest of Team Voltron had certainly thought that the correct route was giving space. And in retrospect, up until this point, maybe it was.

They weren’t friends, though. Or at least that wasn’t the only thing they were. Keith cared about Lance in a different way, a way that made him latch on to the idea of helping Lance and never let go, even that idea had been disguised in Keith’s head as selfishness, as Keith trying to assuage his own guilt.

Lance would become the Blue Paladin again. Allura would take her place on the bridge of the Castle of Lions again. And Zarkon would have no hold on any of them.

Laughing, it seemed, was a potent medicine against fear.

After they had recovered somewhat, Keith got up to go brush his teeth in Lance’s bathroom. That done, he went hunting for supplies to clean up his mess on the floor.

In the bottom of Lance’s bathroom cabinet, Keith found the picture.

His heart twisted. It was the beach photo. Him and Lance celebrating after their victory.

The night Lance had broken the photo had started just like the others. Keith had come in to talk and somehow had managed to catch Lance’s eye. It had driven Lance insane.

“ _You have to go,_ ” Lance signed, flying around the room. “ _You have to go. Just get out!_ ” He had come upon their picture on the wall. And before Keith could react, Lance was grabbing it, hurling it to the floor where the frame and glass shattered into a million tiny pieces.

Keith didn’t know what Lance would react like if he brought up the picture now. There would be a time, he supposed, further from the fresh wound than this one. So he folded up the photo and slipped it into his pocket, glad beyond measure that it still existed.

They were far too deep in the morning hours by the time he was finished cleaning to consider going to sleep, so they wound up laying shoulder to shoulder on Lance’s bed, staring at the ceiling. Apparently Lance had found glow in the dark stars in some alien market, because there they were, stuck up above their heads in little clusters and constellations.

Keith found that he was good at talking with Lance. The fear in his gut was a rather nice motivator, among other things. Tonight it was a little less of a one-sided conversation, and knowing that Lance was making the effort was good enough for Keith. He talked about anything, about his day or the other Paladins or some new trick he had learned. Not yet comfortable enough to carry on by himself. Lance would interject his thoughts through it all.

And every night from now on, Keith would come back. And he would keep coming. As long as Lance was there and Zarkon was closing in he would come back. Lance _would_ be the Blue Paladin again.

Their thoughts threaded together just like their fingers. Holding hands with Lance was terrifying and electrifying and it felt like rebellion. Let Zarkon come, it said. He cannot anticipate us. He cannot even understand us.

“Lance?” Keith turned his head, and Lance was so close their noses nearly touched. “I’m sorry.”

“You already apologized.”

“No, I mean...I’m sorry that I didn’t understand. I’ll admit I’m kind of focused on me sometimes. This isn’t about me, but I couldn’t see that.”

“Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re making it about you again.” The joke was smiling in Lance’s words, so Keith kissed it away. Could they casually kiss like that yet? Maybe it was too early, but these hours didn’t seem quite real. Apart from the rest of the world. Keith would worry about the logistics and rules some other time.

“I’m trying, ok? I guess I mean is that I couldn’t even see how selfless you were being by staying away. You thought you were saving us and the only thing I saw was hate. So...I’m sorry. For underestimating you.”

Lance tapped his chin with slightly crooked fingers. Keith tried not to think about how the bones had gotten that way. It crushed him to know what he would always be reminded of every time he saw a new part of Lance’s body that was broken or scarred or changed forever.

But that didn’t matter. Not now.  

“Hmmm…” Lance raised their intertwined hands and tapped Keith’s against his mouth. “I guess I’ll forgive you. Someday. But you have to promise me one thing.”

“Anything.”

The wicked gleam disappeared from Lance’s eyes, and suddenly he was folding into Keith. It struck him that this was exactly how they had lain in Lance’s mind. Close. Together.

Lance spoke into Keith’s t-shirt. “Never leave me again.” His true meaning rang clear: _never leave me to them again_.

“I won’t.”

“ _Promise._ ” The need in Lance’s voice was palpable and insistent, like a child.

“I promise. I promise I won’t leave you.”

And he wouldn’t. Keith promised himself that, too. He would never again leave Lance to the mercy of the Galra, or anyone who wished him harm. The taste of that guilt was raw in Keith’s mouth, even if Lance didn’t blame him. He would never allow Lance to go through what he had gone through ever again, even if it meant his life, or his next thousand lives.

“I won’t leave you,” Keith said again. He drew Lance in close and buried his face in Lance’s hair. He needed to reassure himself that Lance was really there. The boy was too thin and frail, but he was real. “For all the stars in the universe, I wouldn’t leave you.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Man, I really struggled with this one. Re-wrote it twice and still not 100% happy with it. Thanks for reading, though! Come talk Klance to me on tumblr [@wuhkie](http://wuhkie.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> PS: Keith insinuates at one point that both he and Lance are gay; I hc Lance as bi, but Keith is just assuming in this fic, as he doesn't know what Lance is for sure.


End file.
